


always a well-dressed fraud

by fensandmarshes



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Flirting, Gay Disaster Everyone, Other, POV Jack Harkness, Spoilers for Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Temporary Character Death - Jack Harkness, jack has so many tags that's fun!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:19:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23033872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fensandmarshes/pseuds/fensandmarshes
Summary: Okay, so maybe Jack didn’t think this through.At all.But it’s not his fault,honest. Just maybe he got a little caught up in the fervour that the Doctor tends to inspire, got his eyes backlit and his fire going in a way he hasn’t felt for a good two, three hundred years or so. He might have lost control of his impulses about a minute after rematerialising on his own stolen ship to find that in the - well, time doesn’t work when the Doctor is around, now does it? - in thelittle bitsince he met the Doctor’s gallery of new people all bright and shining, they’ve gone and got themself arrested by the mother.Fucking. Judoon.or: jack and river, both disasters in love with the doctor, decide to break her out - except neither of them know what she looks like this time around
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Jack Harkness, Thirteenth Doctor/River Song, how the FUCK do you tag relationships when jack is involved
Comments: 60
Kudos: 254





	always a well-dressed fraud

**Author's Note:**

> all the love goes to my beautiful, stunning, intelligent, clever, AMAZING beta [@supinetothestars](archiveofourown.org/users/supinetothestars) (who is also desultorydenouement on tumblr!)

Okay, so maybe Jack didn’t think this through.

At all.

But it’s not his fault,  _ honest.  _ Just maybe he got a little caught up in the fervour that the Doctor tends to inspire, got his eyes backlit and his fire going in a way he hasn’t felt for a good two, three hundred years or so. He might have lost control of his impulses about a minute after rematerialising on his own stolen ship to find that in the - well, time doesn’t  _ work  _ when the Doctor is around, now does it? - in the  _ little bit  _ since he met the Doctor’s gallery of new people all bright and shining, they’ve gone and got themself arrested by the mother.  _ Fucking. Judoon. _

And maybe - this is all, of course, completely hypothetical - Jack is only now considering that despite the fact he has to break them out of one of these (hundred thousand) cells, he has no idea what the Doctor looks like this go ‘round.

Which could be a bit of a problem.

His mind’s firing fast and jittery in a long-forgotten rush, his fingers cleverer than his brain as he finds a back door into the prison’s mainframe as best he can - enough of a pathway to pull a few strings here and there, but nothing too reliable. That’s always been his style, anyway. He hasn’t run with (for, after,  _ with _ ) the Doctor in too long, and he’s missed this frenzy.

Their presence gets him going. You could say in more ways than one, but now - that would just be plain rude.

The outpost’s control room - a dingy, stale little place, rather failing to meet Jack’s expectations - is panelled in Beck glass, as strong as anything and crystal-clear because of the self-cleaning. It gives Jack a clear view into the prison in all its rough glory. The main face is a cliffside, hacked from a mountain as if with a meat cleaver or a Freshet blade - and littered with what must be millions of cells. Little boxes of light, stippled by the outlines of bars. The scale is daunting. But Jack’s Doctor-induced fervour is back in full force, and for the first time he finds he means it when he calls a taunt in the cells’ direction - he’s shimmering and awake and  _ alive _ , with an ephemeral passion for the chase that he’s missed, wanted, grieved.

So. Okay, Jack didn’t think this through. But this blunder is by far not his worst - there’ve been a few times involving Dittywine and a very amnesic morning after, and Jack reckons the worst part of that is that it’s happened  _ more than once _ . 

Ahem.

This blunder is by far not his worst, and he’s nimble and spry even at the worst shit-goes-sideways moments. He can figure this out. His brain’s one of the best parts of him, probably even ranks in the top two - if it warrants an entire six-foot tank to be preserved, it must be pretty spectacular. Surely he can pull off a prison heist without knowing the prisoner’s appearance, location, or having any access to the mainframe beyond a couple of low-level security cameras in the boiler room. (Why do the Judoon have a boiler room, anyway? Why would they need one? Is this even a Judoon prison? God, Jack wishes he knew  _ anything  _ beyond ‘the Doctor’s here and they need me’.)

(She? Jack needs a clarification on that one.)

Now would be a good time, Jack reflects, to come up with a plan. One that he’s actually thought through. But he should really draw up some legal documentation surrounding the premise of ‘I cannot be held responsible for anything I do when the Doctor’s involved’. After all, the good old madness is flickering in his veins. 

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. Jack run like it’s your own life on the line towards an impossible task, even though that hasn’t been at risk for centuries. Jack, run like the Doctor’s waiting, and you’re going to be there when she needs you.

Because Jack’s feeling generous, he might admit that maybe it would have been smarter to wait and work out some sort of plan. He might even say it out loud. But as it happens, luck’s on his side (as things always and never are, with the Doctor - though he’s not with them yet) - a Judoon squadron/patrol/fam strides purposefully past his handy alcove at just the right moment, on some filing errand that involves codes to a certain relevant prisoner’s cell and an all-too-unsecured communicator dangling tantalizingly from one of the Judoons’ belts. Their leather kilty things (kinky, but who’s Jack to judge?) are just  _ swooshy  _ enough to disguise the faint brush of Jack’s fingers, and then - in the space of breath - he’s swiped it and ghosted back to his hidey-hole, fighting off a too-wide grin.

Then  _ again _ . He should really get back into the habit of smiling, if he’s going to see the Doctor. 

The communicator - just like Jack expected - is totally unencrypted. Gotta love arrogance as deus ex machina. Best trope. Its functions include ‘glorified key’, ‘Judoon radio’ and ‘map’ - the latter looks at first like a classic top-down one, the kind they used in WW2 and all others besides, but that Jack realises after a minute or ten of intense bafflement is actually treating the cliff face like a flat piece of ground. He holds it up in the direction of the cells, matches the little squares on the communicator to their large-as-life counterparts, and huffs a breath. Gets the adrenaline going, as best he’s able. 

Back in business, baby. And  _ it feels good _ . 

It's simple to cross-reference the codes to the map, and just like that he has a Doctor-finding machine. Not his first. Nor his last, most likely - the Doctor's too flighty to stay with him, and at this point Jack's accepted that no matter the interludes, he's always going to be running after them. If he gets lucky he runs at their side. Point being - the little red dot is waiting, for once staying still (a fixed point, Jack thinks wryly, and grins), on the other side of the cliff face and far, far above him. 

And, well, it’s always like this with Jack. The Doctor-finder says climb, and he says how high, and damn the consequences to the depths of Melos 5.

So climb he does.

The hallways are rough-hewn and grimy - very atmospheric, though Jack’s not super fond of the maudlin energy it inspires. He’s got the Mission Impossible theme playing on loop in the back of his head like a particularly irritating earworm, and at least it sets the tone - although in perhaps the least efficient way possible. HEY, though - his mission isn’t impossible! Just. Improbable. And stupid and not thought-out in  _ any  _ way/shape/form and okay this was probably a bad idea but you know how many shits Jack gives about bad ideas?

Zero!

(Audible gasp.)

_ At least they have ladders, _ he muses. The last time he had to climb more than about fifty feet, it was an old-as-time-itself dragon. The least it could’ve done was provide some kind of ladder, given the number of  _ horns  _ Jack had to navigate around.

Aha. Wordplay.

He’s halfway up a ladder, knuckles white and maybe-too-tight around the rungs, when he hears it. Goddamn, who taught these Judoon to walk? They tromp like the fucking Cybermen. (All at once he’s reminded of  _ it _ , and the asset, and the - and  _ them  _ \- and quick-smart shoves that away we don’t have time to unpack all of that right now we’re hiding from the Judoon platoon, dammit brain, get with the program.) Great early-warning system for Jack, though. 

In hindsight, that should’ve been the point at which he threw in the towel and abandoned the Doctor to their fate. But Jack’s always been  _ terrible  _ at that.

He takes stock of the area. No convenient hidey-holes, given he’s halfway up a ladder. Footsteps from below, so he climbs. But. He’s too goddamn slow.

“Identify yourself,” a Judoon barks. 

The obvious solution here is to let go of the ladder and drop straight onto its head, right? Element of surprise and all that. And how was Jack supposed to know that a Judoon could basically knock him unconscious with one (1) hard knock to the skull?

Mistakes have been made.

He comes to being bodily carried by a set of Judoon. Tries for a wisecrack, and is met with flat reception and a barked list of crimes along the general lines of ‘you really shouldn’t be here in a maximum-security prison trying to break your BFF the horrible war-criminal out of their cell’ - at least Jack assumes. He’s not really paying attention. Anyway, the important part is what comes next.

Gunshots - a couple archaic bullets from Earth, Jack realises with narrowed eyes, alongside a generic Brook Energy weapon of some kind. That’s  _ weird _ . Not that he’s  _ unopposed  _ to the aesthetic, even when he cops a ray to the chest and, uh. Dies for a minute. 

Kind of embarrassing.

Then, a woman’s kneeling by his head with pursed lips and a halo of curly hair. “You’re not the Doctor,” she grumbles, her voice pleasantly melodic. “Hello there.”

“You’re not either,” Jack says, and winks. “Captain Jack Harkness. And who are  _ you _ ?”

**Author's Note:**

> "i am MARRIED"  
> "......."  
> ".........."  
> "..... and?"
> 
> let me know what you thought of this! i'm just hoping i can finish it before canon goes and makes it an au, lol. i'm [hoarding-citrine](https://hoarding-citrine.tumblr.com) on tumblr :O. title from "foreigner's god" by hozier!


End file.
